VARINA DAVIS, BEAUVOIR, AND THE FIGHT FOR CONFEDERATE MEMORY By: Evan R. Spencer A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Public History Middle Tennessee State University December 2015 Thesis Committee: Dr. Robert Hunt, chair Dr. Kelly Kolar ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank everyone who has ever supported, encouraged, or inspired me throughout my life. I could not have written this thesis without the help of a countless amount of people. I must specifically single out a few people that have helped me along the way. First, to my parents and siblings—thank you for providing the exact mixture of support and freedom that I needed to thrive. Without your love and encouragement, I would surely not be here today. Second, to my professors at Middle Tennessee State University and Louisiana Tech University—you challenged me and forced me to produce my best work. I would like to specifically mention my undergraduate history advisor, Dr. V. Elaine Thompson, who first gave me the idea to look into the Beauvoir sale, and my major advisor Dr. Kelly Kolar. Without all of your tireless efforts, I never could have attempted a project of this magnitude. To my thesis advisor Dr. Robert Hunt, this thesis was only possible through your leadership. Thank you for providing constructive and thoughtful commentary throughout the process—even in my “roughest” of drafts. And finally, to my friends, thank you for keeping me sane with afternoon walks, sports talk, trivia nights, and venting sessions. ii ABSTRACT Varina Davis, the First Lady of the Confederacy, had a remarkably contentious relationship with southerners after her husband’s death in 1889. She conflicted with groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy [UDC] over Civil War memory in ways that now seem counterintuitive. These battles demonstrate a fundamental incompatibility between the UDC’s “Lost Cause” memory and the actual past as southerners like Varina experienced and remembered it. The Lost Cause did not serve as a ubiquitous memory, but constructed a past that supported the missions of the UDC in the present. Any person—southern or northern—who undermined Lost Cause mythology was a threat to the Daughters and their mission. Varina’s struggle with southern groups throughout the last years of her life illustrates the incompatibility between the Lost Cause and the actual history of the Civil War. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 CHAPTER I: Life Before the Lost Cause: The Civil War Era through the Eyes of Varina Davis ....................................................................................... 9 Varina Davis and Antebellum America .................................................................................................... 11 From Unionist to First Lady .......................................................................................................................... 23 CHAPTER II: Varina Davis and Her “Pseudo Friends”: The First Lady and Lost Cause Advocates, 1890-1902 ........................................................................... 36 The Beginnings of the Lost Cause ............................................................................................................... 38 The UDC Inherits the Lost Cause ................................................................................................................ 41 Varina Davis and Challenges to the Lost Cause .................................................................................... 47 “Why Mrs. Davis Lives North” ...................................................................................................................... 48 Jefferson’s Ashes and Varina’s Confederate Memory ........................................................................ 53 The Humanity of General Grant .................................................................................................................. 57 “I am BITTERLY Indignant at the Disrespect” ....................................................................................... 59 Varina’s Final Defense ..................................................................................................................................... 62 CHAPTER III: “Away in a Sea of Trouble over Things at Beauvoir” ...................... 66 The “Mount Vernon” of the Confederacy and Confederate Progressivism .............................. 69 Selling Beauvoir ................................................................................................................................................. 76 “They Do Not Know Anything About Me”: The Battle over Beauvoir ......................................... 83 EPILOGUE: Varina Gets the Final Word ....................................................................... 106 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................... 111 iv 1 INTRODUCTION In 1906, Varina Howell Davis sold Beauvoir, her home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, to the Sons of Confederate Veterans [SCV] and United Daughters of the Confederacy [UDC]. She had two purposes in mind: first, that the house would be a perpetual shrine to her husband and the ex-president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis; and second that the land surrounding the mansion would serve as the grounds for a Confederate veterans’ home. Beauvoir—which means “beautiful view” in French—was Jefferson’s final home. He retired there in 1877 and began writing Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, which gives his perspective on the Civil War. He spent the final twelve years of his life enjoying the beachfront and live oaks that gave Beauvoir its name. After his death, Varina wanted to consecrate the grounds in memory of Jefferson’s service to the southern people. By the 1890s, the SCV and UDC had created an infrastructure for memorialization that should have aligned perfectly with the First Lady’s wishes. Led by the Daughters, Lost Cause advocates produced memorials and opened soldiers’ homes at an unprecedented rate. Common sense suggests that the Beauvoir sale should have been simple, as both parties involved seemed to have similar goals. Despite the fact that both Varina and the UDC wanted to establish a shrine and a soldiers’ home at Beauvoir, the sale was anything but straightforward. Throughout the nearly seventeen years of Varina’s life as a widow, she faced almost unbelievable scrutiny from southerners. The most prominent detractors of the First Lady were the United Daughters, which is surprising given Varina’s place in Confederate history. Varina faced criticism based on where she lived, what events she chose to attend, and 2 what she said in public. The Daughters attacked her throughout the 1890s and did not prove to be allies in the Beauvoir sale. Varina should have been the perfect figurehead for the Lost Cause. She was born and raised in Mississippi, lived her entire adult life married to one of the most prominent southern politicians, and had been intimately connected with all aspects of the Confederacy. In fact, some historians have presented her as a proponent of the Lost Cause. Caroline Janney concludes, “Varina Davis’s public comments and writings served to inflame rather than dampen sectional hostilities.”1 Because of this, Janney lumps Varina into a category of Lost Cause advocates—such as the Daughters—that ardently opposed the concept of reconciliation. Creating a category of “anti-reconciliationists,” however, suggests a rapport that simply never existed between Varina and the younger generation of Lost Cause advocates. Although it seems logical that the First Lady and the Daughters of the Confederacy would hold similar ideas about the Confederate past, their contentious relationship suggests otherwise. For example, in 1902 the Richmond chapter of the UDC planned to build a memorial arch to Jefferson near the Virginia capitol building. Instead of being pleased with the honor bestowed on her husband, Varina denounced the plans. The two parties disagreed on the nature of memorial arches; Varina wrote that an arch was symbolic of victory, and that “a triumphal arch to a man whose cause failed…is an inappropriate expression of respect for his memory.” This disagreement, however, is made even more interesting because of the fact that the UDC did not even ask for 1. Caroline Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 241. 3 Varina’s opinion on the matter. Instead, she found out about the plans and felt compelled to criticize them publicly, due to her “vital interest in the matter.”2 In response, the Richmond papers gave Varina what she characterized as a “old fashioned setting down,” as they “repeated a good many things the ladies were said to have uttered about me. Of course, these things hurt me greatly and I was kept in a stew all the time.”3 This type of tension characterized Varina’s relationship with the UDC and other southerners with interests in the Lost Cause. The primary question, then, is why Varina and groups like the UDC did not get along. What caused this seemingly endless strife between the two parties that otherwise appeared to have had complementary goals? Conventional questions about southern Civil War memory focus on the Lost Cause as a foil to northern Unionist